Government gropers at airports a ruse for body scanners coming to schools and malls

Perhaps one of the most controversial topics today is the use of “naked” body scanners at airports by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As this investigation found, it is indeed a matter deserving of such controversy and further investigative focus.

Using the attempted Christmas Day 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by 23-year-old “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as “Exhibit A” for needing the ultra-intrusive “naked” body scanners, the TSA, under the direction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, stepped up their purchases and deployment of the scanners to U.S. airports.

On Christmas day 2009, a total of 40 full body scanners were present at only 19 airports in the U.S., but that would soon change. Immediately following the significantly odd incident aboard flight 253 where Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit reportedly attempted to light explosives hidden in his crotch, former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff and co-author of the U.S. Patriot Act took to the airwaves to lobby for the placement of the nuclear scanners at all airports. Chertoff, the head of the Chertoff Group, a private security consulting agency, served as former DHS secretary from 2005 to 2009.

While working in that capacity in 2008, Secretary Chertoff authored a 38-page terror assessment warning of terrorists, posing as refugees for example, that would exploit our security deficiencies, including air travel. In hindsight, his warning seemed almost like a prediction that Christmas day.